Romance In Patricia Highsmith's The Price Of Salt
In her definitive A Natural History of the Romance Novel Pamela Regis contends that “not every love story is a romance novel.” (50) That classification, she argues, is reserved only for those love stories that contain the eight formal elements she identifies as prerequisites for the genre. Chief among them is the element of betrothal––or, as it is more colloquially understood, the “happy ending.” When considering Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, there is some room for debate as to whether the book can truly be called a romance. The novel details the courtship of two women in the 1950’s––Carol Aird, a wealthy homemaker in the midst of an ugly divorce, and Therese Belivet, a naïve, struggling sales clerk. It unambiguously fulfills seven
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However, the Mattachine Society initially took a more radical approach, founded by a group of men who did, in fact, have communist ties, and while they advocated for the legal rights of gay men, were reluctant to take a strictly integrationist approach (Charles 268-7.) The philosophical bent of these founders was eventually usurped by newer members, who instead centered their rhetoric around the belief that “homosexuals were no different from average Americans except in their sexuality” (Charles 268.) Though Mattachine’s original founders resigned their posts quietly, the divide was contentious, and emblematic of debates that have plagued gay and lesbian advocacy groups almost since the moment of their inception (and, indeed, Del Martin, a founder of the Daughters of Bilitis, would later break from the more integrationist ideology of the organization to become an advocate of lesbian separatism.) Moreover, debates of this nature are still quite common today. For instance, many queer activists have criticized the centrality of marriage equality in recent political discourses surrounding LGBTQ rights. They contend that marriage is a conservative––if not regressive––institution, and that its centrality in civil rights activism tacitly argues that queer people should assimilate to a heteronormative ideals of love and sexual
However, the Mattachine Society initially took a more radical approach, founded by a group of men who did, in fact, have communist ties, and while they advocated for the legal rights of gay men, were reluctant to take a strictly integrationist approach (Charles 268-7.) The philosophical bent of these founders was eventually usurped by newer members, who instead centered their rhetoric around the belief that “homosexuals were no different from average Americans except in their sexuality” (Charles 268.) Though Mattachine’s original founders resigned their posts quietly, the divide was contentious, and emblematic of debates that have plagued gay and lesbian advocacy groups almost since the moment of their inception (and, indeed, Del Martin, a founder of the Daughters of Bilitis, would later break from the more integrationist ideology of the organization to become an advocate of lesbian separatism.) Moreover, debates of this nature are still quite common today. For instance, many queer activists have criticized the centrality of marriage equality in recent political discourses surrounding LGBTQ rights. They contend that marriage is a conservative––if not regressive––institution, and that its centrality in civil rights activism tacitly argues that queer people should assimilate to a heteronormative ideals of love and sexual